For the film "The
Red Violin" (1998), composer John Corigliano
wrote a wealth of music for Joshua Bell, representing a series
of musicians who play a fictional violin through history. Most
of a film score is short cues, but there was one extended piece,
a Chaconne for violin and orchestra, that Corigliano wrote in advance of the film score. Material from
it found its way into the film.

Now, in slightly different
form, it's the first movement of a full-scale concerto, which
debuted in 2003 in Baltimore. It made its Aspen debut Friday
in the Benedict Music Tent with Bell again in the solo role.
Michael Stern conducted an outsized Aspen Concert Orchestra.

The Chaconne alone was
a 17-minute tour de force for Bell and the orchestra. It felt
spacious and lyrical, and left plenty of room for solo ruminations.
In adapting it for the concerto, Corigliano
seems to have amped it up (at least from what I remember from its San Francisco
debut under the baton of Robert Spano
in 1997). The orchestral interruptions intrude more on the soloist
and the movement feels more densely packed. At times it leaves
Bell sawing away on his fiddle while an orchestral uprising
drowns out the ends of his phrases.

What we could hear from
Bell was exactly the sort of high-personality musicality we
have come to expect from this onetime wunderkind. As a mature
artist he has lost none of his technical brilliance but there
is much less exhibitionism in his work. He makes every phrase
feel natural.

That's no easy task,
especially in the concerto's fast second movement "Pianissimo
Scherzo." The notes fly by like the spray of raindrops
in a spring shower, seldom getting beyond mezzo-piano in volume,
as the violinist skims lightly over them. The third movement,
"Andante flautando," starts
off as a sort of recitative for the violinist, mostly playing
in the low register, creating a warm interlude between the skittering
scherzo and the skyrocket of a finale to come.

In the "Accelerando
Finale," as the orchestra holds the tempo steady, the violinist
begins to speed up, gradually doubling the meter of the orchestra,
which then begins its accelerando to "catch up" with
the violin. It is an amazing effect, as if everyone were trying
to keep their footing as a big wave rocks the boat. After several
episodes of this, the movement comes to a rousing finish. Rhythm
is the driving force here, not melody or harmony, the soloist
and the orchestra often simply grabbing at their strings with
their bows, producing a sort of percussive grunt, rather than
playing notes that sound a true pitch.

A contrasting melody
provides a breather between these rhythmic episodes, a melancholy
theme used in the film to identify the violin expert played
by Samuel L. Jackson. The chaconne makes a brief appearance
as the finish gathers steam and ends with a satisfying ka-pow.

There is probably more
to this work that we heard in this performance. The all-student
Concert Orchestra, which usually plays the bargain programs
on Wednesday afternoons, seemed overstretched by the technical
demands of Corigliano's music. At
least, they were concentrating so hard on getting the notes
in place that any chance of putting some finesse into the phrasing
or dynamics went by the wayside. Stern did his best to keep
everyone together, and for the most part he did, but when I
heard the chaconne by itself in 1997 I found much more nuance
than I heard from this orchestra.

Presumably this orchestra
was drafted for this role because Corigliano's
score needs a bigger orchestra than the much smaller Aspen Chamber
Symphony, which usually plays on Friday evenings. The Chamber
Symphony positions professional musicians, mainly principals
from major symphony orchestras, on the first desks. It might
have made a big difference.

These shortcomings certainly
showed in the ragged utterances from the woodwinds and high strings
in Le corsaire,
Berlioz' dazzling concert overture, which opened the program.
It also took some of the gloss off Elgar'sEnigma Variations, which concluded the concert. They made some rich
and lovely sounds, especially in the noble "Nimrod"
variation, and Stern's tempos were expertly judged, but time after
time phrases begged for more interpretive panache than the rudimentary
articulation they got.